By Rohan Preston

In October 1998, gay college student Matthew Shepard was tortured and beaten then left tied to a fence by two men he had met in a bar near Laramie, Wyoming. Shepard's death six days later made Laramie a synonym for violent intolerance and put a national spotlight on hate crime. In the wake of Shepard's murder, members of Tectonic Theater visited the town and conducted interviews. Their docudrama, "The Laramie Project," has been produced over 2,000 times since and was made into an HBO movie. Ten years after Shepard's death, Tectonic returned to the community to see what has changed. On Oct. 12, the company's new show, "The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later," will get a simultaneously reading at 120 theaters nationwide, including at the Guthrie. They found things that many things have changed – there's an annual AIDS walk as well as a Matthew Shepard symposium at the University of Wyoming. "Even the investigators, who were acknowledged homophobes, are now advocates for hate crime legislation," said Andy Paris of Tectonic. But the team also found that "there are many people in Laramie who are invested in saying that it wasn't a hate crime but a drug deal gone bad," he said.
Members of Tectonic also interviewed Shepard's killer, Aaron McKinney as well as his mother. Their feelings are captured in the staged reading that will feature Twin Cities performers such as Mark Benninghofen, Michael Booth, Bob Davis, Melissa Hart, Charity Jones, Tracey Maloney, Kris L. Nelson and Michelle O'Neill under director Ben McGovern.

Matthew Shepard / AP file photo